


whyle

by Empatheia



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-22
Updated: 2007-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-09 06:12:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empatheia/pseuds/Empatheia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is in chains, but even so this is a freedom he has never known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	whyle

The manacles are cold.

It has been three days, and I still cannot move past that very first thought. I should be trying to escape, or at the very least making resentful noises at my captors, but...

...still, all I can see is the slow dissolving silhouette of my Earl against the enormous glaring moon, and all I can hear is the first thing I thought when he vanished completely.

_I am free. I am free. I am free._

I have never consciously thought of my family as a burden or a cage before. I loved my brothers and sisters in the way that only immortals can love: unshakably, _permanently_. I never consciously wished myself free of them even once.

Why, then? Why was the first thing I felt on looking at the empty patch of sky where he'd been only a moment before relief? And following close on its heels, _joy?_

I could not figure it out then, and I cannot figure it out now.

I am a prisoner. That is natural. I killed many of them, it would have been strange and foolish of them to trust me. However, they have been kind in their own way: the room is not a cell. The bed is soft, there are books for me to read and Chinese finger puzzles to amuse myself with. (Those latter are a gift from Allen, I am almost certain. The boy is too kind for his own good sometimes, but I can't complain.)

Three times a day someone brings me food, and it is always good food, if not in great amounts. It is usually Lenalee who brings it, for she finds it easiest to forgive me... but sometimes it is Lavi, ever curious about the things I have seen and known in my strange divided years, and sometimes it is Kanda, but only when no one else can be found.

Of all of them, he dislikes me with the most passion. I enjoy speaking with him, for he never tries to convince me to turn coat and work for the Order as the others always do. He does not want me as a comrade; he wants me in chains, as I am now, forever. I like that honesty.

My favourite times, however, are when the Bookman comes to sit with me. He is oldest, and has all the long knowledge of his lineage within his mind, and so I can speak freely with him of things no one else remembers. I tell him things that no one else knows, and he thanks me for them with a grave nod and ghost of a smile, staring at me unblinking from his painted eyes. Even if they still don't feel like _my_ memories, they are mine because there is no one else for them to belong to.

Of all of them, he perhaps understands best what it is like to be immortal, to know so many things that new knowledge begins to feel like variations on old, because there are already ten other things already known which are far more interesting.

The only things which continually surprise me are people. Even in all this time I have failed to come up with a fool-proof categorization system for the whiles of the human heart.

I may look at a woman and categorize her as a downtrodden peasant, but then she may look me in the eye the next day and be full to the edges of her soul with the joy of life. I may look at a man and believe him to be of the kind only interested in money, but then he may spend his fortune uselessly trying to keep his ailing child alive for one more day.

A prime example is Kanda. The more I learn of him, the more I instinctively wish to categorize him as a solitary creature, one who does not care enough for others to risk himself for them. However, I know for a fact that this is not true; I have heard often enough the tale of how he stayed behind to fight my brother Skinn and allow his comrades to go on ahead, fully expecting to die in the process. That is not something a mere packless wolf does.

And Lenalee… she is unfailingly kind, but in her sometimes I see a streak of cruelty that runs deep and hidden. It shows itself usually only for good purposes, of course, because it is her... to protect her friends, she would do anything. Anything at all, if it were truly necessary. I pray that she never has cause to test the depths of that capacity within herself.

Lavi, too. He appears specious and silly on the outside, a jester and a flighty fool, but I have seen his eyes record scenes of true horror without flinching away, and the fathomless years of Bookman memory behind them.

All of these people here. No matter how I judged them initially, they have all managed to surprise me at least once. Some of them, like Allen, surprise me every day.

So I am imprisoned, but not bored. Nor do I suffer, except from grief over my lost siblings.

Road lives, I soon discover. They bring her to me as soon as she is capable of walking, and though her wrists are bound she staggers across the room and throws herself into my arms.

I am glad beyond words to see her. I had thought, these last three days, that there was nothing left at all of the world and family I knew but for myself. She weeps, childlike despite her considerable age, into my shoulder, and will not speak for a long time.

"Are they unkind to you, Road?" I ask her, sure of the answer but curious how she will respond.

"Yes," she said, surprising me for a moment, until she continues with "they will not let me die."

Ah. Well, that explains that, then. I should not be so surprised. Her brothers are gone, her beloved Earl, her castle full of toys as well, and all her strange fey power over the minds of men. It is not unusual that she should wish for death after being so reduced, but I am thankful to the children of the Order for refusing it to her. If they had relented...

"Would you leave me alone, then?" I ask her reproachfully.

Her proud crags of hair are flattened and sad from days of careless neglect, and there are bags under her eyes. She looks somewhat shrunken, as though losing her power has deflated her from within. "No," she answers with a pout that looks more familiar on her face than the dejection of a moment ago.

"Good. I might have had to follow you, and Death is not somewhere I am desperate enough to be curious about just yet."

"I hate this, though," she whines. "I hate that little room and these things around my wrist and the food they bring me."

"It's good food," I protest, defending the Order and unsure of why I am doing it.

"Good _for_ me, maybe," she grumbles, "but you know my feelings on vegetables."

I laugh, feeling my chest expand for the first time in days. "Road," I say thoughtfully, "what would you like to do? I have an idea of what path I would like to take, but I want to know what you think."

She was expecting the question, I think, for the first thing she does is look around her shoulder to see if the guards are listening in. They are not — entirely too trusting of them, but I admit I am not a threat right now. I've hardly even learned a thousandth of what it means to be mortal yet.

She leans into my chest, whispering so they cannot hear even if they listen with their ear to the door.

"I like them, Tyki," she says, not sounding nearly as conflicted as I knew she was feeling. "I know they killed everyone, but... I'd be lying if I said we didn't deserve what they brought."

"I know," I agree. "We have lived entirely too long for death to be unjust. We were none of us innocent then, and you and I are not innocent now. They were not wrong in what they did."

"I'm not sorry," she says defensively, although she hardly needs to defend herself to me. "I just... I'm curious, about what it would be like to be on the side that builds things rather than destroys them. We kill people. They save them. I... I want to know what it feels like to save someone's life."

"You already have," I remind her gently. "The minute you stepped back and let Allen kill the Earl, you saved every life the Earl would have taken if he'd lived." My chest tightens. I do not regret my decision, but Road regrets hers sometimes, I know.

"It's not the same. That's just an abstract concept, it's not real. I talked to Miranda for a long time. She comes to visit me a lot. She told me about how it feels to be thanked for something you do for someone else. It sounded nice. I want to try that."

"Do you think they'll let us try?" I ask her softly. "I think I would like to know what it feels like to be forgiven, myself."

Our souls are blighted, more than any human in the world, for we have the evils of a hundred lifetimes staining them, not just one. Still... redemption is a lovely word, and we have no reason left to stain them further. The Earl was the reason we fought, and now he is gone.

Forgiveness, by any mortal measure, should be something far beyond our reach.

However, as I said, humans are constantly surprising me. Hope refuses to abandon my heart.

"I think they will," Road says. She is crying now, small hot tears that I have not seen in decades. "I think they want us to try. They're tired of death, just as we are."

The manacles on my wrists are less cold now that they are trapped between us. I no longer shiver. "Well, then," I murmur, "shall we?"

She nods.

We may never be forgiven, but already the mortal concern with time creeps over us. There may not be many years in which to find out the answer to our questions.

We have lived for aeons, but strangely, only now do I truly feel a living part of the world. The immortal detachment fades with every second.

My heart beats so strongly because it is already dying.

I am breathing because I _must._

It is a frightening thing, to live, but I am beginning to think it may be an unexpected sort of wonderful as well... there is nothing left but to try and see.

Pray for us, if you are willing.

**X**


End file.
